Summary

Our Score

8/10

Review Price free/subscription

Price: £748, or £642 without monitor & peripherals.

If you're a dedicated hardware enthusiast, you would usually pick your own combination of PC, monitor and peripherals to create your ideal gaming system – that way you get exactly what you want. However, for many this is too daunting a prospect, and not all PC gamers know about the hardware side of things. There's also a value consideration, as you can often get the same selection of bits cheaper as a bundle than when buying them separately. This would certainly appear to be the case with the Cyberpower Infinity i5 Achillies XT, which gives you a relatively powerful PC, Full HD monitor and peripherals (though no speakers) for only £748!
Before we get onto the other bits, here's a quick teaser of what you can expect from the PC: an overclocked Intel Core i5 750 with Radeon HD 5770 graphics for DirectX11 compatibility and decent gaming performance, backed by 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, all housed in a custom sound-proofed Antec Three Hundred gaming case. Considering these are almost identical specifications to the OverclockersUK Titan Xenomorph AVP which is just a standalone PC, the fact that Cyberpower has managed to keep the price tag identical while throwing in a better CPU (quad-core i5 instead of dual-core i3), Full HD monitor, peripherals and sound-proofing is truly impressive!

However, inevitably the quality of the extras has suffered from this keen pricing. The monitor is the AOC F22s+, which we've recently reviewed and weren't too impressed with due to its lack of digital inputs and poor build quality - if you want all the details it's worth reading the review. However, as long as you don't intend to playback Blu-rays (or other HDCP-protected content) we suppose it does the job, especially since its image quality isn't too bad and the Infinity i5 Achillies XT is powerful enough to run many games at its native 1,920 x 1,080 resolution with all the details turned up. Another saving grace is that for a mere £28 extra, Cyberpower will upgrade you to the LED-backlit BenQ G222HDL monitor with DVI.
Quite frankly, the wired Logitech peripherals are even more disappointing than the monitor. Both keyboard and mouse connect over PS2 and are plain matt black affairs with zero extras. The ambidextrous optical mouse is reasonably comfortable with two buttons and a scroll wheel that offers lightly notched feedback. The keyboard offers no secondary functions or multimedia buttons, but the keys have adequate feedback and are not too loud. They do the job in a pinch, but gaming peripherals these most certainly are not.
In light of this, as with the monitor we would either upgrade them to a good set (which should set you back around £32 for the decent minimum from Cyberpower's varied selection), or just opt for the PC base unit on its own, which brings its price down to a tantalizing £642.62 – but we'll get onto the implications of that nearer this review's conclusion. For now, let's see what the PC itself is like.